Arab Strap – I’m Totally Fine With it…review

Aidan Moffatt feels like the guy you meet at a party who’s so intense in conversation that desperately the host puts all the clocks forward three hours and tells everyone they need to go just so’s he’d leave. Everything this semi-outcast says is true, it’s just that holding a mirror up to society and all it’s ugly flaws isn’t what most people need before the nachos have even gone out.

I‘m Totally Fine With It, I Don’t Give A Fuck Anymore reads like the ramblings of a man who’s given up, but in actual fact the songs here are presented by someone who cares way too much and gets most of their excrcise shaking their head. It’s the Arab Strap’s second post reformation album and one on which Mofatt and musical partner Malcolm Middleton have with thought put even more distance between the old version and the new one than on their first, As Days Get Dark.

Here atonal white noise and juddering bass scar opener Allatonceness, the abrasions framing the heaviest material the duo have ever written, whilst the ravey glister of Bliss recalls peak-era New Order. Originally conceived as a string of one-off singles, Moffatt’s lachrymose drawl is one of the few constants as he dissects internet trolls, isolation and on closer Turn Off The Light, the unwanted epiphany that the end of all this is just the end. You aren’t going to hear I‘m Totally Fine With It, I Don’t Give A Fuck Anymore at parties – and anyhow, this wonderfully bleak edifice deserves much better than to be damned to that.

You can read a full review here.